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Photographed by Evan Sung

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Photographed by Evan Sung

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Photographed by Evan Sung

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Gazing at the odd, surreal set that serves as the backdrop for Marc Jacobs fall 2012 show, which reminds one variously of a collapsing Italian village, or a spooky amusement park, or even a place where a depressed Smurf might vacation, you would swear that the elaborate woodwork and humongous winding path, the ghostly staircases and haunted arches, were in the works for months.

So it comes as a great surprise when the artist Rachel Feinstein, who with Jacobs, dreamed up the whole business, sets the record straight: Two weeks ago, she emailed her friend Marc about something or other that had nothing to do with fashion, she recalls. He asked her to come by and talk about the set for his upcoming show, saying he was thinking about something melancholy, something sad. He had been admiring Feinstein’s sculpture Puritan’s Delight, and he told her, “I’m feeling Puritan—snow, winter, craggy trees, grottos. Mold. Piranesi,” she remembers.

By Friday of that week, Feinstein had created an eighteen-inch model of her ideas, based on buildings she had sourced from references far and wide: an edifice she found in Giotto that she describes as “very weird”; Rococo follies; a crumbling staircase from Ireland. (She had wanted to incorporate water, but it proved too complicated, so winding strips of Mylar were pressed into service instead.)

Jacobs picked the dilapidated structures he liked best (or found eeriest), his set designer of long standing got the model just before the Super Bowl, and the builders went to work. Eight days later, a benevolent, jagged-edged dystopia looms as the fashion audience takes its seats. When Feinstein sees her vision now, glowing in blue and ivory, five minutes before the first model finds her way down the vast curving catwalk, she says, “I expected the lighting to be more harsh. This is so moody, but I like it.”

After the show, Jacobs, beaming backstage in his trademark kilt, has his own take on the wacky wedding of influences behind his wildly ambitious, disconcerting stage set: “We were into ruins, but then also The Cat in the Hat! The Lorax! The famous picture of Kurt Cobain with the tinsel! Really, it was my pop references and Rachel’s art references—it was really just about the two of us.”